Nebulous Connections

One of the first rules for understanding humans is that no matter how wondrous anything may be, it will become commonplace and beset by petty complaints.

And so it was with interstellar travel.

Once nothing but a dream woven by scientifically-minded fantasists, warp propulsion brought it into the world of the possible. At first only for the very rich, attended by every luxury… but as the days of Stephenson’s Rocket and The Flying Scotsman gave way to Southern Rail, so too did space travel fall into the hands of the masses.

What had been unthinkable was now just another mode of transport. People griped about delays and wrote lifestyle articles about coping with “warp boredom”.

It only got worse as the New Age of Colonisation made long voyages more common. Setting up a new life on another world, under a sun that no human had ever seen was daunting enough, but coping with a month or more in deep space?

It was no wonder that long-haul space-travel became seen as “dangerous”. Oh, not physically dangerous, or at least no more so than the aeroplanes of bygone centuries. No, this was more of a social danger, as there were whispers of colonies imploding through interpersonal drama before anyone even touched the ground.